


Subverting the Dominant Paradigm

by Lila Futuransky (futuransky)



Category: Chrestomanci - Jones
Genre: Documentation, Fairy Tales, Gen, Queer Themes, Witches, manifesto
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 17:54:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futuransky/pseuds/Lila%20Futuransky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Janet learns about witches and stories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Subverting the Dominant Paradigm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Care](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Care/gifts).



Exploring Chrestomanci Castle was a long term affair. Janet didn't find the archive room until well into her third year, when she was poking around the recesses of the library for something interesting she hadn't yet read.

The cupboard was piled high with thousands of manila folders, each one with a date and a series of letters and numbers carefully penned in the upper left-hand corner. When you lifted one stack off a shelf, another would loom out of the shadows behind. They seemed to organize themselves by theme--one deathly boring dossier about tax evasion was followed by another, and another, and another, all columns of figures and dates. Interworld magical crime really ought to be more interesting.

When Janet was just about to give up in disgust and go for a walk, she found a file on the quashing of a mermaid pornography ring. Though the culprits had destroyed the evidence during their futile attempts at escape (sentencing information was included in the file; the men now resided in an underwater jail), the prospect of browsing the seamier side of Chrestomanci's law enforcement kept her leafing through the dossiers. The Castle's library was well warded according to someone's idea of age appropriateness, and she had had more than enough of the school stories  with which  Millie and Julia filled the under-18 girls' shelves.

The next file was rather more rewarding to her curiosity. 

_***_

Chrestomanci Castle Archive of Magical Crimes and Misdemeanours.    
Dossier 7736. Code Omega-X-DGR-373. 

Documentary Evidence, Exhibit A.

Provenance:   
Confiscated from Alberta Murray (known as Bert), Chrestomanci Castle grounds assistant and Third Class Witch, during investigation of excessive absences from work. 

Description:   
Pamphlet printed by thaumaturgical means. Spelled to become unreadable when touched by nonmagical personnel, by any man, or by a member of Chrestomanci Castle's investigative team. Enchantment broken by Maud Bessemer. 

Sources inform that this document is known informally as the Hedgewitch Manifesto.  It has been circulated widely among lower order witches, mainly through a network of bars catering exclusively to women. 

***

Witches of Britain,

Ask yourselves a question. Is your country a good place to be a witch? Is it a good place to be a woman? To be a woman who does not seek the company of men? This is a country of witchcraft, a place where magic shapes all lives even when it is practiced only by a few. It could be a place where witches are honoured. Why then are we subjected to outdated rules, to the dictates of the church, to  constant vetting from a man qualified to oversee us not because of anything he has done but by virtue of his greater power? 

Think of what it means to be a witch; tawdry charms, cheap potions, scratching a living selling potions and cures -- all the while knowing that those with enough power to get employment in the civil service despise you, and those with none are a little afraid. Why do we accept this fate? Who taught us that witchcraft is something to be ashamed of? The church proclaims that you must not make changes to God's creation, but the powers given by God should surely be shared and used.

Witches have always lived in different ways than those not blessed with magic. We have followed our own paths. Have you wondered what our sisters did before the iron rule of British Church and State fell upon us? Perhaps they cast their spells freely. Perhaps those inclined to love one another did so without fear of denunciation. Perhaps together we have the power to make those days anew, to have them again.

We have learned from the fate of our comrades in the recent Wolvercote uprising. Though we acknowledge the unjust nature of magical governance in the British Isles today, we know that we cannot not step outside our bounds and risk feeling the heavy weight of C----'s authority. Our goal is larger than that of the few who recently tested those limits, and we all know that they were sorely punished.

Together, we can change the way you think. We can do this without violence, without the kinds of grand gestures or grasping after money and power that caused our Wolvercote brethren to be quashed. We will begin with the children, and soon Britain will know a different kind of witchcraft, a different kind of society, a different kind of love.

You may wonder what I am talking about. If you wanted to change those minds, how would you go about it? Maybe you would start with stories. That's how we learn what's what, after all. That's how we learn about the princess, and the prince, and the rewards we'll get for doing good, and how we'll get our comeuppance if we're doing wrong or aren't faithful or are a witch. It's how we learn that just being a witch is as bad as killing granny, or stealing the throne from its rightful heir, or being cruel and uncaring and vengeful. Nobody ever takes the witch's side.

You could take the witch's side, and pass on your story. All it takes is a few words' difference. Join with us and we will write a different world.

Annotation :  
I have as yet been unable to decipher coded instructions for "joining" the plot. Enchantment relies on the document being read in a particular location. A field agent will be required for further infiltration. M. Bessemer.

***

Janet thought of Gwendolen. This seemed like the kind of thing that would be right up her street. Probably it proved she was Gwendolen's double after all, because reading the manifesto made her feel excited and alive with possibilities. She thought of all the things that annoyed her about Chrestomanci's world, the things that she would have thought magic would have been able to get rid of. The petticoats and ridiculous outfits girls and women had to wear, for a start. Maybe if witches took over the world they would make it like the stories her mum used to tell her, where Girls Could Do Anything, only a more magical version. That might not be a bad thing. 

She turned to the next thing in the file, which was a battered notebook full of scrawled handwriting. Like the pamphlet, it had an official notecard attached.

***

Exhibit B.

Provenance:   
Confiscated from Murray's  room upon her termination of employment.

Description:   
Handwritten notes in cheaply purchased journal, unenchanted. These appear to be Murray's efforts toward joining the 'changing stories' plot.

***

There were pages and pages of it, often scribbled over and crossed out. __

_The princess picked up the spindle and laughed. As the point touched her finger, her godmother's love and blessing poured into her. She raised her hand and set the twisted yarn to dancing in the air. She knew that she, too, was a witch, and she rejoiced. She dressed herself in breeches and set forth from the castle, sure in the knowledge that no danger on the road could touch her, and went to find her godmother and thank her._ ~~~~

~~ Story ends before it starts. Boring. ~~ ~~~~

~~Maybe I better have some villains after all~~.  __

_The prince stepped into the room where the princess, exhausted after feeling the limits of her new found powers all day, was asleep. He looked at the pentacles, the crucibles, the marks of magic done all around her, and he was horrified. How could he marry this woman and gain control of her kingdom if she had skills like these? There was only one thing to do._

~~ How can he put her to sleep for a hundred years if he hasn't got any magic and the spindle isn't enchanted for that? ~~

~~ Fools and bairns shouldn't see things half done. The spindle gave her magic, didn't it? If he takes it away she'll lose her witchcraft and have no choice but to be his bride again. Then she can go on a quest to get it back, right? And find the godmother. And happily ever after. ~~ __

_She touches the spindle again._

_It had taken years, but now the princess knew what she wanted. Not a kingdom, though she would not give it over to the prince for the sake of the young women who didn't have magic power of their own to keep themselves safe. She wanted her godmother -- to be cradled and caressed by the hands that had made the spindle for her, to have her life and her power spun like its thread. _

***

It went on for pages. Janet's skin tingled. She thought back through the gardeners she had seen in her time at the Castle. They had all been men... Unless, perhaps, she hadn't been looking closely enough. 

***

The last document in the file was not labeled. It was a used envelope, annotated on the back in Chrestomanci's unmistakable handwriting. 'Let them have their fun -- they'll get nowhere. This is not worth our while to pursue.'

***

Janet traced the dashing script on the envelope wih her finger. Maybe Chrestomanci's lack of concern meant that Bert had been allowed to go free, even if she didn't work at the Castle any more. Maybe Janet would be able to meet her one day and ask if she'd succeeded in rewriting the world into a place where having those thoughts about spindles and godmothers would be a bit more okay. Though if Bert had, Janet thought, she might have noticed by now.

Distantly, the dinner bell sounded. Janet shook herself abruptly, and unwillingly returned the dossier to its place in the stacks. After a moment she took it out again, extracted Bert's journal and tucked it into her waistband, between two layers of her petticoat.  She walked out of the archive room, but before heading for the dining room she paused and slipped into the children's section of the library. 

She picked up a book of fairy tales and began to leaf through it. 

_Once upon a time there was a beautiful witch..._

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> When I saw that my recipient's requests included both Chrestomanci and queer fairytale retellings, I couldn't help imagining what a queer fairytale retelling would mean in Chrestomanci-land. For it to make sense, there would have to be some queer witchy activism going on... I imagined that Janet, who already has quite the outsider's take on her world, might be willing to get behind that. But how would the Castle's bureaucracy react?
> 
> I'm making an interpretation of canon here, which is that the fairy tales in Chrestomanci's world are a lot more like ours than you would expect for a magic culture. I think this is well supported by the way witches appear in canon, especially in Charmed Life (disapproved of by the church and the Mayor, etc) -- and it also makes my request-crossover possible. :)


End file.
